bleepology » non-modular synths

West Coast Boys: Dutch Electro Portraits

bdu — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:37:12 +0000

Whether you’re into electro from the .NL like I am, or you just want a heaping helping of synth pr0n, do yourself a favor and check the article out.

My favorite bit? This money quote from the end:

“”One gets the sense that… there are a more than a few women out there who wish, just for once, that [these musicians would] come out of the basement and have dinner.”

D16 tackling the SH101?

bdu — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:08:38 +0000

Seems like D16 may be working on an SH-101 plugin. I’m all for it if they do as good a job on this as they did with the 808/909. I could use a few more instances of my real 101, I just can’t get enough of that sound.

That said, based upon this image it looks like they’re implementing an arpeggiator but no sequencer. The SH-101 sequencer was so easy to use and fun to churn out simple patterns with that its omission would really bum me out. Don’t do it D16! Do this one up right!

Thanks to Waveformless for the heads-up.

MC-202

bdu — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:49:26 +0000

I stopped by a friend’s new digs on Tuesday night, and just had to take a shot of his 202. I *WILL* have one, someday. And the first thing I do to it will be to bypass the CPU on the CV/Gate inputs. Still, hard to beat that synth in such a compact size.

Synthsploitation

bdu — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:05:59 +0000

For a period in the late 90’s early 00’s, FutureMusic ran a series of covers spicing things up in an incredibly tacky way with cover models holding the synth reviewed that month.

What was the point of this? It’s tacky and sexist. The only thing sexy about a woman with a synthesizer is if she knows how to USE it, and I have a strong inclination that this wasn’t the case here.

Anyhow, these mags recently came up on MatrixSynth, and it seems that not many people still have them, so I dug through my collection and scanned the ones I have. I believe there are others I do not own that were released after my FM collection ends.

As I said, I personally find them tacky and sexist, but I guess I’ll let you decide. Click the image below to go to the full flickr set.

Computer Controlled

bdu — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:10:50 +0000

The latest thing in analog is digital. Computer control of CV direct through a DC-capable audio interface.

So I acquired such an audio interface and the two plugins that have been released for these purposes, MOTU’s Volta and Expert Sleepers’ Silent Way.

I’m using a non-MOTU interface, so there are some kinks to work out there with Volta, but MOTU is being plenty helpful, and I trust we’ll get things worked out eventually. In the meantime, here’s Silent Way controlling my 101 via my simplified CV/Gate test rig. 6 octaves of perfect tuning!

New SEM from Tom Oberheim

bdu — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 23:04:05 +0000

via alt_mode on twitter, here’s a pic of the new SEM, looks a lot like the original with a digital/midi section:

Note that the left side says Midi to CV, so I’m assuming the sound generation is all analog, or it wouldn’t require that!

John Bowen Solaris

bdu — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:43:14 +0000

John Bowen had a much more complete version of his Solaris synthesizer, in black and white varieties. This thing is sounding great, and looking nearly done!

Korg – Any Color You Like

bdu — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:21:00 +0000

Korg had the new MicroKorgXL in spades, as well as many colors:

And the nano controllers in black:

They also had their DSD 1bit recorders arranged in a new multitrack fashion, for a total of 8-track recording in this format. Neat for archiving those old master tapes that are falling apart.

More Waldorf

bdu — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:01:59 +0000

Largo, the new software synth, looks to share some, but not all, lineage with the Blofeld. It’s missing the XT wavetable implementation, for instance. $250 in the US.

Look, it’s a Blofeld Keyboard! The pricelist I saw today said the upgrade to the module version I mentioned earlier would be about $150 in the US.

Waldorf Blofeld Samples

bdu — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 22:32:11 +0000

For awhile now the Waldorfians have been restless, knowing that the new Blofeld keyboard was coming and that it had support for a bunch of RAM samples that didn’t exist in the Blofeld module. It had not yet been announced whether this feature could be retrofitted into the module version.

I spoke with Stefan Stenzel this morning on this issue, and you may be happy to know that the hardware required for this feature exists in the module-version already, and support for the samples will be unlocked in the module via a paid challenge-response upgrade, similar to the one used to unlock extra voices in the old Waldorf microQ. So there you go…

Pictures are taking longer than I expected, hopefully soon, but I know the waldorf list was getting antsy ;0)